


If, Then

by knitmeapony



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4014421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/pseuds/knitmeapony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it all goes to plan, they can begin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If, Then

He does not need keys to enter your house; somehow the door is always unlocked when he arrives, even if you checked it before you went to bed, even if you locked it moments before and you’re sitting up, watching television. Sometimes you remember hearing him come in; usually you convince yourself it’s just the wind.

He crosses the threshold and leaves his shoes in the foyer; he’s a gentleman, after all. He does not take off his jacket, but he might remove his shoes, if he had them, or perhaps he removes his gloves. Or a hat, if he has one, he’s genteel enough to hang that on a hook. If it’s there, the hat or the hook or the shoes. But it’s done, that gesture of civility, and he passes up the hallway, crosses to your dining room table, and puts his briefcase on the floor, under your favorite chair, the one with the loose rung that you like to nudge with your toe while you’re eating dinner.

He sits, and he keeps his jacket but he surely sits as though he’d been asked. He sits, and his hands — which no longer have gloves on them, if he came into the house with gloves on at all — his hands are open, and he rests the back of them against the surface of the table, and he waits. 

He sits with his hands just so, and he lets his eyes — if he has eyes — he lets them unfocus, and he stops looking where he is looking. He lets himself look to the left and to the right, to places most do not, to the place in his periphery where there is always movement.

He sits quietly in your house, and you do not remember that he has come in, and if you listen hard all you can hear is the soft sound of static, and even that will fade away. He sits and he looks to where nothing should be, where everything is.

He sits patiently and he waits. And though time does not pass, he is patient and he lets it slip by.

He sits patiently without shoes or gloves or hat, even if he never had them, and with his hands waiting, with his eyes and his mind and his senses open. And after those long moments when no time at all might pass, after that, just when his gaze skims to the left, as long as he isn’t looking just at it —

— as long as it’s all gone just so, then he can feel her take his hand.


End file.
